The Essay

The Essay

by Catherine V. Moorephotos by lisa elmaleh

Find it in the Fall 2016 issue of The Oxford American magazine, or read it for free ONLINE.

A long-form narrative nonfiction essay that explores the Hawk's Nest Tunnel Disaster through a sequence of poems by Muriel Rukeyser called "The Book of the Dead," included in her groundbreaking 1938 collection of documentary poems of witness, U.S. 1.